Monday, 12 February 2018

DVD Roundup: Butt-dialing edition

While no where near the heights of The Lego Movie and The Lego Batman Movie, which were in turns funny, meta and poignant, The Lego Ninjago Movie still provides an entertaining 101 minutes for its primarily younger audience, those of which who are probably familiar with the Ninjago franchise. Containing the usual 4th wall breaking and surrealness you'd expect from Lego movies, it never reaches the emotional depth of the first movie, it tries so much harder then a lot of the lazier kids movies out nowadays. Read Layla's full review here.

I have a lot of love and respect for animated movies, for they truly are a labour of love, and Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman's Loving Vincent really does look like it took a lot of labour and a lot of love in its creation. 65,000 individual oil paintings, all in the style of Van Gogh, painted by 125 painters, took four years to make. While the style is admirable, I always have a little doubt in my mind when people tackle the subject of Van Gogh's death, and his subsequent label as a "suffering artist", as he seems to have become a kind of martyr for art and less of a real person over the years. Still, his work is incredible, and I would be more than happy to watch 65,000 frames of a film in his art style.

Ah, two great actors in Kate Winslet and Idris Elbar come together to make what looks a really very meh film. A romantic melodrama dressed up as a survival epic, The Mountain Between Us is the kind of story that really shouldn't sound as frivolous as it is, but after hearing about its disastrous ending, the masochistic part of myself kind of wants to sit through its sappy Hallmark flavourings.

Hole onto your breeches everyone, there's a new Pokemon movie out! A reboot of the original TV series, young Ash Ketchum is irresponsibly sent out into the world at the tender age of 10 to catch so-called "pocket monsters", some of which are pretty damn ferocious. Pokemon the Movie: I Choose You! looks to have better quality animation than its predecessors, but the one thing I get joy out of this film is seeing this clip of a bunch of grown men gasping in horror as a certain pokemon speaks for the first time. What?? No!

Directed and starring Mercedes Grower, Brakes is a low-budget dark comedy about nine couples breaking up. Featuring a lot of improv, Brakes looks itself to be inconsistent, but considering some of the comedic talent in it, namely Steve Oram, Julian Barrett Noel Fielding and Julia Davis, it would definitely be worth a watch for fans of British comedy and nihilistic outlooks on love.